The invention relates to apparatus used by telephone installers, burglar alarm installers, and the like for manipulating lengths of wire or cable in inaccessible areas.
When installing a burglar alarm or wiring a house for telephone service, a worker is frequently called upon to route the burglar alarm wire or telephone cable across inaccessible areas. For example, wires are sometimes routed across basement or attic crawl spaces which are generally too cramped for the worker to work comfortably and which are sometimes so cramped that the worker cannot even crawl to the far reaches of the crawl space where the wires are to be run.
Various devices are known in the art for the remote manipulation of wires and cable. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,739,832 and 3,866,965 show wire-manipulating tools used by linemen for installing high-voltage wires. Tools of this sort are generally mounted at the end of a long pole, which is manipulated by the lineman for positioning the wire. The device of U.S. Pat. No. 2,739,832 provides a hook member having one or more rounded bights for retaining the wire. The device of U.S. Pat. No. 3,866,965 provides two arms or prongs projecting at acute angles from a shaft to define two notches facing in opposite directions for retaining the wire. It also includes a positioning member for guiding the wire into one or the other notch. Both of these devices are used to displace a length of cable perpendicular to the direction in which the cable runs, for example, to position a high-voltage cable on an insulator atop a utility pole.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,096,244 shows a device used to manipulate the end of a rigid tie wire for securing a high-voltage electric line to an insulator on a utility pole. The device is formed with a number of different notches which are arranged so as to provide a number of different grips as needed to twist (or untwist) the rigid tie wire about the electric line.
All of these devices are used either to manipulate rigid wires or to manipulate wires which are stretched taut between two points. In the installation of burglar alarm cable or telephone cable, often only a short length of free-hanging or freely extending flexible or semi-rigid cable is exposed. This length must be grasped at its end and drawn across the crawl space or other inaccessible area. The devices disclosed in the above-mentioned patents are useless for this purpose because they are incapable of grasping a loose, flexible wire at an end. In fact, because of the lack of any suitable device on the market, workers have resorted to fashioning makeshift tools on location out of discarded wire coat hangers for use in snagging a free cable and drawing it across the inaccessible area.